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AMERICAN CLASSICS Ernst TOCH Violin Sonata No. 1 • Cello Sonata Divertimento • String Trio • Adagio elegiaco Spectrum Concerts Berlin Ernst Toch (1887-1964) Music from the 1920s: the passages of heightened motion and power, the ebbing Violin Sonata No. 1 • Cello Sonata • Divertimento • String Trio • Adagio elegiaco the Divertimento and the Cello Sonata away, the way in which the movement dissolves at the end. Classical forms are here no longer normative; they Survey of the Life of a Creative Artist From Toch’s Early Works: The duo Divertimentos, Op. 37, and the Cello Sonata, have become the subject of the composition. Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 21 Op. 50 , were written in 1927 and 1929, during what was Toch headed the central movements of both works This is Spectrum Concerts Berlin’s third recording of probably Toch’s most productive period. In them, he “intermezzo”, but they are anything but short intermezzos chamber music by Ernst Toch. Its musicians give concerts The First Violin Sonata, which Toch’s friends used to refer engaged in a creative dialogue with his artistic milieu in or interludes. Toch employs the term in the late above all in Berlin and New York and are passionate to as “Brahms’s Fourth”, was a product of this two ways: in the music itself and in the dedications of the Brahmsian sense, as a deliberate understatement, about exploring and highlighting the cultural links between understanding of tradition. Two reasons lie behind its pieces. The Cello Sonata he dedicated to Emanuel indicating a particular limitation of the musical material. Europe and America. As part of this focus, they revive jocular nickname. Stylistically speaking, Toch’s Op. 21 Feuerman and the Op. 37 duos to the Vienna String The pieces grow out of a short initial idea, which Toch works by composers who had successful careers that takes its cue from Brahms. But it also rounds off the Quartet, which at that time still comprised Rudolf Kolisch immediately makes more complex, turning it, were cut short when they were driven into exile by the latter’s three sonatas in G major, D minor and A major – (violin I), Fritz Rothschild (violin II), Marcel Dick (viola) and paradoxically, into a kind of open circling; the basic motifs Nazis. Spectrum has played a major part in bringing about keys whose tonics each correspond to one of the open Joachim Stutschewsky (cello). All of these musicians left rotate, changing in length, structure, proportions and inner the revival of interest in Ernst Toch in recent years. strings of the violin – with one in E major, whose tonic Germany or Austria. Most of them emigrated to the United propulsion. This recording documents almost four decades of corresponds to the uppermost open string of the States, as Toch did; Stutschewsky went to Palestine Toch takes this type of “creative mechanism” further Toch’s artistic development, from his early Violin Sonata, instrument. The Brahms connection should not be (which would later become Israel). The Divertimentos are in the third movements. In the finale of the Divertimento, written before the First World War, to the commemorative overworked, however; Toch’s generation had no choice composed in such a way that all the members of the Op. 37, No. 1, a hyped-up march rhythm morphs into a Adagio elegiaco, whose composition heralded the but to model its chamber music on Brahms. Who else was quartet get to play: No. 1 is for violin and cello (the two perpetuum mobile, which suddenly breaks off with renewed creative impulse of the 1950s and 1960s. It there? Apart from Bruckner’s String Quintet, the New outer parts), No. 2 for violin and viola (the two inner parts). amusing arbitrariness. The last movement of the Cello shows a composer who maintained an intense dialogue German School around Liszt and Wagner produced no When performed one after the other they ought, logically, Sonata is reminiscent of music for a ballet mécanique. In with the world around him: with the musical trends current chamber music of any historical consequence. to be followed by a quartet. its strict tempo, its subtle allusion to dances then in vogue at any given time and with cultural trends, but also with Toch’s Sonata No. 1 is close to the violin sonatas of In the Divertimentos and the Cello Sonata, Toch and in the way he plays with classical forms, Toch unites the course and catastrophes of history. Max Reger (1873-1916), and perhaps also Karl Weigl engages with the classical three-movement form of the characteristic traits of the kind of urbane music cultivated Toch realised his ambition of becoming a musician (1881-1949). Like theirs, it observes classical structure sonata. In the first movement of Divertimento No. 1 the in France by composers such as Darius Milhaud, Francis against his parents’ wishes, teaching himself composition quite strictly in its sequence of themes and their urgent first subject with its moving triads is answered by a Poulenc and the American George Antheil, in Germany by by transcribing Mozart string quartets and noting exactly development, but introduces a greater internal freedom cantabile second subject. Both are stated at length then, Stefan Wolpe and in Hindemith’s early work, and in how they were “made”, for instance, and by producing through the use of colouristic passages in the piano part in the following section (which corresponds to the Russia above all by the young Shostakovich. The Nazis compositions based on themes by classical composers, (first movement), dramatic interjections (second development section in classical sonata form), they are declared war on it when they coined the term then comparing the results with the works of the great movement), and interpolations such as the Andante extended, clothed in richer tone colours, transformed into “Asphaltkultur” (“asphalt music”). masters themselves. Using this methodology, he made central section of the finale. The Sonata was written disconcertingly beautiful polyphony, subjected to canonic such good progress that in 1909, at the age of 22, he won shortly after the period of study that the Mozart Prize grant tricks, and crossed over themselves. Each is kept Exile and in memoriam: the city of Frankfurt’s Mozart Prize, which included a grant enabled Toch to undertake, and shortly before he took up separate and given its own space, however. In the third the String Trio and the Adagio elegiaco for a year’s study at university. It was during this period a teaching post at the Musikhochschule (University of section, the recapitulation, Toch omits the return of the that he developed an ability to absorb ideas quickly, Music) in Mannheim, and it marks the end of his early- second subject, which was treated at length in the central On 1st December 1942 Anneliese Landau, who had once adapting them to his own purposes and using them as a period work, which wears its nineteenth-century heritage section. been the leading light behind the Jüdische Kulturbund springboard for developing new ideas of his own. He on its sleeve. Fundamental characteristics of his future The Cello Sonata opens with an apparently (Jewish Cultural Foundation) in Berlin and had emigrated approached tradition as Goethe urged his readers to in compositional style are just as much in evidence, innocuous theme stated simply by the piano. This is taken to London in 1939 and to the United States at the Faust Part I: “Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast, however: formal clarity and liveliness, voice-leading that up by the cello, before finally appearing in the lower beginning of 1940, sent a letter to Ernst Toch, asking him erwirb es, um es zu besitzen!” – “Whatever you have creates a network of equal parts, his understanding of register of the piano as well. The movement has various about various biographical matters and questions of inherited from your forefathers you must earn for yourself, light and shade in the tonal organisation of the piece. layers of narrative, through which the theme makes its principle. With regard to the former, Toch replied on 18th if it is to be yours.” way. It is structured like a fugue, but also like a sequence December 1942: “I left Germany in April 1933 and went to of variations – everything revolves around the one theme: London where I lived until September 1934. […] I came to USA upon a call of the New School of Social Research in activity, where the parts seem to go their own ways. Here, Katya Apekisheva September 1934 and taught composition there for two too, there are centrifugal forces in play. In the finale, years. In August 1936 I went to California. I am teaching passages of suspended motion make the vitality of the Katya Apekisheva was a winner at the Leeds and Scottish piano composition (occupying the Alchin-chair) at the University 1920s feel broken, while on the other hand it is rendered competitions and has appeared as soloist with the London Philharmonic, of Southern California.” (The two of them corresponded in more intense by a greater compositional complexity. In Philharmonia, Hallé, Moscow Philharmonic, English Chamber and Royal English.) That year (1936), with his first Hollywood film the middle the music almost fades out, withdrawing into Philharmonic Orchestras. Her recordings have received international score under his belt and a second in the pipeline, Toch the depths of a cello solo. After this, the reprise of the acclaim. Born in Moscow into a musical family, she studied at the wrote his String Trio, Op. 63. It is the work of an exile in opening motif begins almost like a film edit. Gnessin Music School with Ada Traub and Anna Kantor.

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